The Genius Of Brother Ray Charles

Today we pay tribute to a musical giant who will certainly never be replaced, and who richly deserved to be known as the Genius. Brother Ray Charles was born on 23 September 1930 in Albany, Georgia.

Partially blind at five and completely sightless at seven, Charles nevertheless saw music with more clarity than almost any pianist-singer of the 20th century. Indeed, he helped to invent modern-day R&B with his deeply soulful, gospel-influenced piano playing and singing, in a recording career that lasted for five and a half decades.

The great success of the 2004 biopic Ray was just one modern-day measure of his influence and reputation in contemporary music. Jamie Foxx won Best Actor at the Oscars for his portrayal of the great man, and the following year, guested on Kanye West’s gigantic US hit ‘Gold Digger,’ which sampled Ray’s ‘I Got A Woman’ and stayed at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for ten weeks.

Charles’ own first chart appearance came just four years after the end of World War II, when he was part of the Maxin (also known as McSon) Trio. Their ‘Confession Blues’ was a big R&B record in 1949, after which Ray made the chart in his own name for the first time in 1951, on the Swing Time label, with ‘Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand.’

‘I’ve Got A Woman’ was his first R&B No. 1 in 1955, fully 50 years before it came into the hip-hop era with West’s single. Ten more would follow, a sequence that spanned a remarkable 34 years and included such unrivalled recordings as ‘Drown In My Own Tears,’ ‘What’d I Say,’ ‘Hit The Road Jack’ and ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You,’ until he was featured, with Chaka Khan, on Quincy Jones’ ‘I’ll Be Good To You’ in 1989.

In 1963, just ahead of his first British tour, Ray responded to that nickname he had by saying: "Genius? That's nothing to be ashamed of. But it gives you a sense of responsibility. I'm just an example of the fact that there's something for everyone to do if they just want to do it.

"They call my singing 'emotional' and 'full of feeling,' but that's how the songs are to me. I try to get the feel of a song and the emotion in it, before I record it. It's got to move me. If I don't feel anything from the song, then I forget it. I don't record it.” Hallelujah, we love him so.

1 comment

You don’t have to tell me about brother Ray His big its were great but some of the other recordings like Cry the Johnny Ray hit and Lucky Ole Sun are
unbelievable I was at every concert in the New York city area I am sure you
know the country album MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY MUSIC was the reason for the great rise in country music